These Words Spoken By President Clinton At His Inauguration on 20 January 1993 can usefully serve as a leitmotif for the present issue of the journal Government and Opposition. The issue is itself the outcome of a conference organized by the journal and the Department of Government of the University of Manchester. The theme was the ‘Influences of Domestic and International Factors on Processes of Policy-Making’. However, this title does not quite catch the interactive quality of the phenomenon which the group was seeking to examine. Increasingly, it has been contended, policies at the domestic level whether in what we once called the first, second or third worlds are being profoundly influenced by international or ‘global’ considerations. But it is also the case that international agreements are being accommodated to the sensitivities of the domestic politics of the partners.

By The Standards of The Solar System, Where are found the only comparable bodies of whose existence we have certain knowledge, the earth is not a large planet. For most of recorded history, on the other hand, it has certainly seemed so to its inhabitants, and only in recent decades has a different perception come to prevail, as instanced, for example, by the much-remarked Ward-Dubos book of 1972, Only One Earth — The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet. In 1872 Phileas Fogg needed almost eighty days to go around the world, in 1961 Yuri Gagarin managed the feat in little more than eighty minutes, and nowadays less intrepid travellers than these think nothing of accomplishing the task using commercial aircraft in comfortably less than eighty hours. Photographic images and, in general, data of unlimited complexity meanwhile circle the globe virtually instantaneously. The technologies here are those of transport and communications but in most other areas of human activity too the twentieth century has seen similar technological strides.

The Impact of Domestic Policy on International relations and vice versa has seldom been more clearly demonstrated than in late autumn 1992, with the near collapse in November of the Uruguay Round and the series of events in the European Community surrounding the Danish and French referenda and Britian's forced withdrawal from the ERM being only the two most glaring examples.

During Recent Years, Analysts of World Politics Have noted increasing tensions and conflicts between the countries of the OECD area. As the process of globalization is extending to include several new sectors of domestic economies, multilateralism is deteriorating and perhaps, in some sectors, reaching breaking-point. Globalization, widely acknowledged as a powerful engine for the growth of the world economy during the 1970s and 1980s is now splitting up into trading blocs and much more limited minilateralism. This contribution aims at analysing the extent to which policy-making could be improved so that it can address and deal with the effects of globalization and turbulence on domestic and international environments.

Maastricht Has Put Subsidiarity in The Forefront OF European Community (EC) guidelines. This new principle will allow the EC to take action wherever competences are shared in those areas where the member states cannot sufficiently achieve its objectives, but not beyond. The new Article 3b reads:

This Rather Cumbersome Title Might Be Easier to understand if it was first explained in which sense the two concepts which it contains are taken here. Thus ‘information revolution’ is taken to mean not only the scientific and technological revolution, which has culminated in the microelectronic revolution, but also the two major geopolitical consequences of the information revolution: ‘interdependence’ and ‘globalization’. The question posed here is how this vast complex influences and changes the functioning, some would say, even the existence of parliamentary sovereignties.

For Anyone Interested in Modern Politics There Could scarcely be a more pressing issue than how best to approach the task of identifying and comprehending the novel political challenges and opportunities which flow from the ever increasing interdependence of the destinies of human populations. At the intersection between challenge and opportunity there lie both fresh processes of policymaking and implementation and distinctly older political routines and habits of mind: the attempt at worst to pour very new and volatile wine into disturbingly antiquated bottles, or at best to bring the accumulated resources of centuries of statecraft to bear upon a bewildering array of often unprecedented hazards.

At First Sight it Might Appear Somewhat Curious to be studying the efficacy of the liberal democratic state just at that historic moment when liberal democracy seems to have triumphed on a global scale. Yet within contemporary Europe, the nature of political community and sovereign power have been thrown into question by the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, the intensification of regional integration and global turbulence. Taken together, these forces appear to deliver a fundamental challenge to the democratic ideals which underpin liberal democratic states. This article seeks to evaluate the nature of this challenge. It invites specific consideration of the consequences of these ‘threats from above’ and ‘threats from below’ for the character of the modern state.